Outside the Wire, by Patricia Smiley

Praise for Pacific Homicide “Smiley kicks off a hard-boiled series with a bang in this fast-paced novel that sweeps readers along quickly.”

—Library Journal

“An excellent book about the emotions that drive some of the best policemen and –women to go after their own justice, no matter the cost.”

—Suspense Magazine

“Terrific! The classic cop story goes contemporary in this suspenseful, riveting thriller. Instantly cinematic and completely authentic—LAPD’s tough and savvy Davie Richards will capture your heart. It’s a page-turner from moment one.”

—Hank Phillippi Ryan, Agatha-, Anthony- and Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author

“In Pacific Homicide, Patricia Smiley, at the top of her form in this multi-layered thriller, investigates the grisly murder of a young Russian beauty found in the 6,500 miles of sewer pipelines under Los Angeles. Smiley knows the LAPD from the inside out and writes with the authenticity of Joseph Wambaugh. This is the first of a series featuring the tough-gal detective Davie Richards. I can’t wait for the second one.”

—Paul Levine, bestselling author of Bum Rap

“With a taut style, unfailing ear, and unflinching honesty, Patricia Smiley’s Pacific Homicide puts a fresh, deeply emotional spin on the police procedural.”

—Craig Faustus Buck, author of Go Down Hard

“Crackling with wit and suspense, Patricia Smiley’s Pacific Homicide is a classic police procedural told with flair, imagination and the deep authenticity of an author who knows the LAPD from firsthand experience. You’re in the hands of a master storyteller as you follow beleaguered heroine Detective Davie Richards—struggling to track the murderer of a young Russian model through the glitter and the dark underbelly of Los Angeles, while battling an internal affairs zealot bent on destroying her. This one kept me reading through the night.”

—Bonnie MacBird, author of Art in the Blood: A Sherlock Holmes Adventure

“Fans of the classic police procedural will love Davie Richards, the LAPD detective at the heart of this novel … Readers will discover Smiley’s nimble talents for understated wit, unsentimental affection and the emotional wounds that drive the best of cops to buck the system in search of justice.”

—Kim Fay, Edgar Award finalist for The Map of Lost Memories

“Pacific Homicide combines an insider’s knowledge of the LAPD with a clear-eyed, no-nonsense heroine and an entertaining dry wit. Davie Richards is easy to fall in love with and her story is full of surprising twists.”

—Matt Witten, writer and producer for Pretty Little Liars, House, Medium, Law & Order, and Homicide

PAT R I C I A S M I L E Y

OUTSIDE THE WIRE A PACIFIC HOMICIDE NOVEL

Midnight Ink

woodbury, minnesota

Outside the Wire: A Pacific Homicide Novel © 2017 by Patricia Smiley. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Midnight Ink, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Edition First Printing, 2017 Book format by Bob Gaul Cover design and photo by Ellen Lawson Editing by Nicole Nugent Midnight Ink, an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Smiley, Patricia, author.

Title: Outside the wire: a mystery / Patricia Smiley.

Description: First edition. | Woodbury, Minnesota: Midnight Ink, 2017. | Series: A Pacific homicide mystery; #2 Identifiers: LCCN 2017021256 (print) | LCCN 2017025057 (ebook) | ISBN 9780738753089 (ebook) | ISBN 9780738752358 (print) Subjects: | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3619.M49 (ebook) | LCC PS3619.M49 O98 2017 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017021256 Midnight Ink Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. 2143 Wooddale Drive Woodbury, MN 55125-2989 www.midnightinkbooks.com Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to My great uncle Julius, US Army 91st Infantry Division, who gave “the last full measure of devotion� in France on October 9, 1918

Other Books by Patricia Smiley Pacific Homicide (Midnight Ink, 2016) Tucker Sinclair Mysteries False Profits Cover Your Assets Short Change Cool Cache

Acknowledgments I’m grateful for the astute literary analysts who read my pages and provided insightful feedback, including Ramona Long; my wise and talented agent, Sandy Harding; and as always, the members of my beloved writing group—The Oxnardians. Thanks also to the team at Midnight Ink—Nicole Nugent, Katie Mickschl, and Terri Bischoff— and to fellow sailor Scott Jarema for suggesting the title. Much credit goes to Detective Michael D. DePasquale for setting me straight on the possibilities and limitations of police powers. I take full responsibility for occasionally ignoring his sage advice.

While researching this novel, I interviewed a number of veterans who shared their experiences from Vietnam and other wars. I offer my heartfelt appreciation for their candor and their sacrifice.

1

Davie Richards

woke up at four a.m. as she had most mornings for the past few months: drenched in sweat, throat raw from crying out in her sleep. Flashbacks. The shrink had told her to expect them.

A symptom of post-traumatic stress, he’d said. For what seemed like the millionth time, her mind played back the response.

“Soldiers in Kandahar have PTSD,” she’d said. “I don’t have PTSD.” “Other traumas trigger symptoms. For example, people who’ve survived a car accident or an earthquake. They have nightmares and trouble sleeping, too.”

“I do not have PTSD.” He had picked up his pen and scribbled some words on a note pad.

She imagined it read something like Patient in denial and resistant to therapy. Prognosis hopeless.

She had told him early on how often she thought about the shooting—the sound of gunfire, the sight of blood pooled around the

1

man’s head. True, she was going through a rough spell. For the past three months whenever she went to qualify at the firing range the smell of burnt gunpowder sent her heart racing. Loud noises made her flinch. But those reactions would fade over time. She just had to park the bad memories in an inaccessible compartment of her brain, same as she had always done.

Davie got out of bed, letting her coppery red hair tumble down her back. Her oversized white T-shirt had absorbed some of the sweat, but the sheets were damp. She examined them for a moment, wondering if she’d reached The Limit. It was a cop term for the number of dead people you could see before it was beyond your ability to cope. She’d seen her share of bodies during her nine-plus years as an LAPD patrol officer and in the past year as a detective. She’d known other Homicide detectives who’d investigated hundreds of murders and never reached The Limit, but none of them had killed two men in the line of duty. She had.

Sometimes she felt overwhelmed with guilt, thinking about the families that had been left to mourn, but she never questioned her decision to fire her weapon. The shootings were righteous. Her actions had saved innocent lives. But there was a price to pay for taking the life of another human being, and she was only beginning to understand that cost.

The department required everybody who’d been connected with an officer-involved shooting to be evaluated by a shrink. Following the first shooting, she’d been released after only one visit. Her relief was palpable, because extended therapy might have damaged her career.

After the second shooting, she continued seeing the shrink because he hadn’t released her for duty right away … and because a part of her didn’t want him to.

Davie pulled the sheets away from the mattress before heading toward the kitchen to make coffee, hoping her workday would be uneventful.

2

2

Davie

heard the sound of jet engines roaring overhead and the long, impatient honk of a car horn. Warm, stale air blasted through the open window of the detective car as she drove up the corkscrew ramp of the parking facility adjacent to Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX. An hour after arriving at work, she and her partner, Det. Jason Vaughn, had been called out to investigate a body found on the second floor. Davie disliked the closed-in feeling of parking garages. Lately they made her feel claustrophobic.

Vaughn ended his phone conversation. “Communications Division didn’t get any calls about a disturbance before the body was found.”

“Probably no witnesses then. Just our luck.”

He looked at her and smiled. “Another opportunity to use our super­powers.”

Davie had known Vaughn since their academy days but had only worked with him for the past several months at Pacific Area Homicide.

They didn’t always agree on how to approach the work, but they hashed out their differences without any permanent damage to the friendship.

3

After Davie parked, she stepped out of the car, inhaling the acrid odor of motor oil and tire rubber. Pacific patrol officers had already established the crime scene perimeter to protect any evidence and marked it off with yellow tape that read police line—do not cross.

She instructed them to cordon off all entrances to the garage and list the make, model, and license plate numbers of nearby vehicles. She also assigned one officer to maintain the crime scene log and another to canvass the area for witnesses.

Davie and Vaughn always followed the same routine. They studied the area from different angles and compared notes later, because the truth was, sometimes you couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Davie jotted down their arrival time and the weather conditions—57 degrees and overcast—and noted that the lights in the garage provided limited visibility.

Normally she and Vaughn agreed on a path that everyone would use to enter and exit the crime scene to keep contamination at a minimum, but she was annoyed to see their protocol had already been breached. An officer and a sergeant from the Airport Police had walked through the crime scene and were standing near the victim.

Before approaching them, she made a sketch in her notebook, including the position of the parked cars relative to the body on the pavement. She was no artist, but the diagram had to be completed before calling in the criminalists. Sometimes things got moved or disturbed and she had to know exactly how the scene looked when she arrived.

The Airport Police had a stormy history with the LAPD, so when she introduced herself to the sergeant, she wasn’t surprised that his greeting was short and curt. The sergeant’s chin tilted upward in a gesture of defiance. “I called the coroner’s office. They’re on their way.”

Davie could almost feel her blood pressure spike, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that. What he’d done 4

was improper and he knew it. This was Pacific Homicide’s crime scene, not his. The sergeant was just leg lifting, marking his territory.

No ambulance had been called to the scene, so it would be the coroner’s job to determine time of death and later to check the victim’s body for hair or fiber evidence. She had an hour to make the first call to the coroner’s office but that was only to give them a heads up about the body. The investigator wouldn’t respond to the scene until Davie called the second time, because once he arrived the corpse belonged to him.

Between the two calls, detectives and criminalists had a chance to take photographs, collect fingerprints, and gather other evidence without having everybody and his brother tramping through the area.

Her tone was low but firm. “Stand down, sergeant, before you piss off the wrong people.”

The sergeant’s stony expression told her he was unmoved by her warning. “Just trying to speed things up.”

Vaughn shot him a hard stare as he pressed numbers on his cell keypad. “I’ll call Dr. Death. Tell him to put us on the list but not to roll out until we phone again.” He turned his back on the sergeant and walked a few feet away to talk in private.

Davie was petite—five-one, just over a hundred pounds. Men often used their bulk to intimidate her. It never worked. “We only have one chance at a crime scene. You screw that up and a killer goes free. You want that on your conscience?”

The sergeant glanced at the officer by his side and then answered in a matter-of-fact tone. “You’re preaching to the choir, Detective.”

Davie thought about pressing her point but suspected any attempt to change his attitude would be unproductive. Instead, she jotted down his name, serial number, and rank. “Who found the body?”

“A schoolteacher,” the sergeant said. “She came back from a wedding in Jerusalem. On her way to the car, she saw him slumped on the 5

ground.” He pointed to the body lying by the trunk of a four-door Audi A6. “Over there.”

“Where’s the witness now?” Vaughn said.

Davie flinched at the sound of her partner’s voice. He’d obviously completed his call to the coroner’s office, but she hadn’t heard him creep up behind her.

“In the back of our patrol car,” the sergeant said. “She’s pretty freaked out.”

“I’ll grab the tape recorder from our Murder Kit and have a talk with her,” Vaughn said. “Maybe she saw the hit go down.”

As soon as her partner left, Davie squatted next to the victim. He was a white male with muscular arms and a trim waist. Judging by the wrinkles on his face and loose skin on his neck, she estimated his age as somewhere in his early sixties. Still, he looked unusually fit. None of his clothing was torn. There were no visible defensive wounds, so the victim hadn’t put up a fight. He was in the fetal position, which was often a reaction to pain. Rigor mortis hadn’t yet set in, so it was unlikely he’d been dead for long.

A pool of blood from a perforating bullet wound on the right front side of his skull had saturated the victim’s black leather jacket and white polo shirt. She was no forensics expert, but the shot looked like it had been taken at fairly close range. The neat hole on the back of his head was smaller, which told her the bullet entered from the front and exited in the back. She flashed back three months to the suspect she’d killed with a similar shot and then forced her eyes closed to keep the memory at bay.

When she opened them again, she saw that a dog tag, wound loosely with black electrician’s tape, was attached to a ball chain around the victim’s neck. The tag lay near his left ear. The placement seemed unnatural, as if it had been staged.

6

She glared at the sergeant. “Anybody touch the body before we got here?”

“I moved the dog tag, ma’am. I was hoping to identify him, but I gloved up first.”

Davie turned toward the voice. The name on the Airport Police uniform pocket read luna. The officer had wide-set eyes and full lips. Closecropped hair made his ears look like wings. Stitch marks were still visible on a jagged scar that stretched from his right ear to his chin.

“Nobody touches the body until the coroner gets here,” she said, recording his name and serial number in her notes. “You should know that.”

The sergeant crossed his arms over his chest to convey his disapproval. “He told you, Detective. He didn’t touch the body.”

Luna’s expression was impassive. “I served two tours in Afghanistan, ma’am. Army infantry. I saw the dog tag. I thought he might be a bro.”

Davie studied Luna’s scar and wondered if it was a battle wound.

Then she pointed to the victim. “This guy looks at least thirty years your senior. It seems unlikely he’s still on active duty.”

“That doesn’t matter. He’s still my bro.”

“How do you know he’s Army?”

Luna returned her stare without blinking. “You can tell by the dog tag. Each branch of the military uses different information. That’s why I know this guy was Army, like me.”

“Is that printed on the tag?” Luna shook his head, so Davie continued. “What else can you tell me about it?”

“It’s painted black. Since Vietnam, the Army requires soldiers who operate behind enemy lines to blacken all insignia.”

“You think he served in Vietnam?” she said.

“Hard to say, but the tag looks old. This one has a social security number on it. The Army doesn’t use those anymore.”

7

Davie sat on her heels next to the body for a closer look. “Why is it wrapped with tape?”

Luna hunkered down across from her and pointed. “See that plastic bumper around the tag? It’s called a silencer. It’s supposed to keep the tags from making noise when you’re on the move. Sometimes that isn’t enough. The enemy can still hear you coming. So, some guys tape the tags together to keep them from jangling.”

“You keep saying tags. I only see one.”

“There’s usually a second one attached by a short chain. When a soldier dies in battle, one tag is removed and taken back to headquarters. The other stays on the body for identification purposes.”

Davie pulled a pen from her notebook and slipped it inside the finger of a latex glove. She lifted the tape, exposing five lines of information stamped into the metal: woodrow, zeke c., followed by a social security number, o pos, and no rel pref. She assumed the last two lines represented his blood type and his religious preference—none.

“The tape looks like it was torn,” Davie said. “The edges are still clean, so I’m guessing it was recent.”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s what I thought, too.”

“You think whoever tore the tape stole the second tag?”

“Could be.”

Davie rose to her feet. “You think the victim could still be on active duty?”

Luna stared at the body. “I doubt it. The Army makes you retire at sixty. He looks a few years older than that.”

“If he’s retired, why was he wearing dog tags?”

A haunted look settled on Luna’s expression as he stood to meet her gaze. “I don’t know, ma’am. Most retirees don’t wear their tags, but you get close to people when you’re in the military. Soldiers are trained to get everybody out alive. Sometimes you fail. The victim 8

might be honoring a buddy who died in combat. It’s hard to explain to civilians. It’s a brotherhood stronger than anything, even family.”

Davie didn’t know what it was like to be a soldier, but she’d been a cop for almost ten years, so she understood the bonds between people who were responsible for keeping you safe. She made a 360-degree turn, studying the garage. The murder had been committed in a secluded area in the early morning hours when it was likely still dark and no one would be around. There was no place for the victim to escape an attacker unless he jumped two floors to the street. Robbery might have been the motive for the attack, but it seemed unusual that a killer would find value in old military ID tags. She would know more about what was missing when she searched the car.

A car-key remote lay near the body. It couldn’t be moved until it had been photographed, but Davie wanted to know if it belonged to the Audi. She gloved up, walked toward the car, and discovered that the driver’s side front door wasn’t locked. That told her the victim hadn’t had time to secure the car before he was killed. Since he fell near the trunk, he may have been heading to get his suitcase.

She made notes and then returned to the body. Without disturbing the position of the remote, she pressed the lock button. The Audi’s lights flashed. The victim had likely driven the car to the airport, but that couldn’t be confirmed until she ran the license plate. Once she viewed the garage surveillance footage, she hoped to see who fired the shot. She pressed the remote again to return the vehicle to its unlocked state.

A cursory search of the car’s interior revealed no obvious evidence. Davie swept her hand under the seats but found nothing. Travelers used this garage because it was across the street from the international terminal. Either the man—Zeke Woodrow, presumably—had come to the airport to meet somebody or he was taking a 9

flight himself. If the latter was true, he must have a passport in his pocket or in a suitcase.

During her police academy training, instructors had taught her to write only what she saw and heard at a crime scene, not her hunches or conclusions. But she was a Homicide detective now so theorizing was part of her job. She flipped open the trunk using the release lever inside the car but saw no luggage there, boosting the theory that Woodrow had come to pick up a returning passenger. On the other hand, Davie already suspected the shooter removed the dog tag; maybe he’d taken the victim’s luggage, as well.

She heard footsteps and turned to see Vaughn walking toward her.

“Did you learn anything from the schoolteacher?”

He pulled her aside so the sergeant couldn’t hear the conversation.

“She heard tires squealing when she stepped out of the elevator and then a car barreled around the corner. The windows were tinted, so she couldn’t see the driver, but she believes the car was a BMW, one of the bigger models. She doesn’t think the driver saw her but she’s scared. I checked the area for tire marks. The garage is full of them. I’ll have the techs take some photos, but I doubt they’ll lead anywhere.”

“We need a copy of the garage security tapes.”

Vaughn gestured toward the sergeant. “We aren’t going to get any love from Darth Vader over there. I’ll call the substation and ask one of the detectives to get them.”

“Maybe Luna can help. He seems like a decent guy.”

He nodded. “The photographer and the crime scene peeps are on the way. I’ll corner Luna.”

A short time later, the criminalists, latent print techs, and the police photographer from the Scientific Investigation Division arrived.

Vaughn had also contacted Pacific’s official towing service. The truck

10

driver would take the Audi to a sterile location, where techs would search for trace evidence.

Davie made the second call to the coroner’s office. While she waited for the investigator to arrive, she asked the SID photographer to take two sets of photographs of the body—one in color for her and one in black-and-white to spare future jurors from looking at death in full color.

She turned when she heard the coroner’s investigator call her name.

11

3

Davie watched as the coroner’s investigator searched the body.

He found no passport, cell phone, or wallet in the victim’s pockets.

Davie told him what time the body had been found and when she and Vaughn had arrived at the garage. With that information, he checked the victim’s liver temperature and estimated the death had occurred somewhere between 5:00 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. A search on her cell revealed that sunrise had been at 6:35 that morning, so the attack had likely not happened in full daylight.

Two hours into the investigation, the most concrete information Davie had about Zeke Woodrow was the social security number stamped on his military dog tag. From past investigations, she knew the first three numbers were associated with the state where a person was born. A search on her cell revealed Woodrow was likely born in Iowa. She wasn’t sure how that information could help her investigation, but she made a note of it anyway.

12

Davie hunched over the coroner’s investigator, watching him work. “How soon can you schedule the post?”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re joking, right? We have at least a hundred fifty bodies stacked up waiting for autopsies. Even if we give you priority, you’re still behind other homicide cases that came in before yours.”

“So … tomorrow?”

He chuckled. “Ain’t gonna happen, Richards. Not even for you.”

It was after ten o’clock when the coroner removed the body and the Audi was towed from the garage. Davie and her partner closed the crime scene and headed to the car.

Vaughn removed his jacket and placed it neatly folded on the backseat.

“New suit?” she said.

Vaughn beamed. “A beauty, isn’t it? Half price sale at Barney’s.”

Her partner had a tall, slim build that was perfect for designer suits and silk pocket squares. His fashion gene had been passed down from a Northern Italian mother who was also responsible for his sandy hair and soft-brown eyes. Davie called him George Clooney’s betterlooking cousin, a tease he didn’t seem to mind.

She started the car and made a U-turn. “If you were any more of a clotheshorse, Jason, you’d have to list your height in hands.”

He settled into the passenger seat. “Funny. At least it beats your lame Yogi-phobia jokes.”

The tires squealed as she negotiated the city ride down the ramp.

“You shouldn’t have told me bears were your Kryptonite.”

“Trust me, that won’t happen again.”

Her partner’s bear phobia was a running joke dating back to their police academy days. One night over drinks he told her about a camping trip with a group of friends and a baby black bear that had wandered into their campsite looking for food. He’d overdramatized the 13

incident to make her laugh, probably not expecting she’d still be kidding him about it all these years later.

Davie drove on surface streets toward the station where she and Vaughn were assigned to the Homicide table. Pacific Division was number fourteen of twenty-one decentralized police stations. It was a small piece of the Los Angeles pie—25.74 square miles of the city’s 468—and included 200,000 of the approximately three million residents. Its western border was the Pacific Ocean with Culver City to the east, the Los Angeles International Airport to the south, and National Boulevard to the north, and included the neighborhoods of Venice Beach, Oakwood, Mar Vista, Playa del Rey, Playa Vista, Palms, and Westchester.

As Davie drove, she noted how the years of drought had made neighborhoods look like dusty brown outposts in some third-world country. It was striking how much she missed the greenery. The landscape would change once you entered neighboring West L.A. Division, where affluent residents could afford the cost of second– and third-tier water usage to keep their lawns lush.

When they arrived at the Culver Boulevard gate, Davie pressed her ID to the security sensor and parked in the area designated for detective cars, just steps away from the back door of the two-story brick station. Once inside, she and Vaughn turned right into the squad room. Her boss, Det. Frank Giordano, was sitting in his workstation cubicle. She could almost hear the crinkle of his starched white shirt as he waved to acknowledge her presence.

Giordano was bent over the phone, speaking in a low voice, which was unusual because he was a big man with an even bigger personality. His retirement was a couple of months away and she wasn’t looking forward to the day. She hoped he was quietly lobbying to postpone the inevitable. Giordano had lobbied the brass after the second shooting 14

until they returned her to Pacific. His loyalty and support meant everything to her.

Giordano ended the call and peered over the gray cubicle wall that separated their desks. “How did it go, kid?”

She filled him in on the homicide. “So far, we don’t know why the victim was at the airport this morning. You think the airlines will tell us if his name was on a passenger list?”

“They might,” Giordano said. “Call and ask. If he was at Bradley terminal, he was probably flying international. That narrows the field.

If anybody asks for a search warrant, you can write up a boilerplate and get a judge to sign all of them at once.”

“I’ll make some calls,” Vaughn said. “I can type up a warrant if we need one. In the meantime, Luna is working on getting us the garage surveillance video.”

“Keep me posted,” Giordano said.

Vaughn sat at his desk across from hers and logged onto his computer. A moment later, he called to her. “Look at this. Luna already came through with the surveillance footage.”

Davie grabbed her notebook. She and Giordano stepped to Vaughn’s workstation, hovering over his shoulder to see the screen. Luna had included the video feed from two hours before the murder until an hour after the body was found. There wasn’t much happening in those early hours, so Vaughn fast-forwarded until the Audi came into view. Davie noted the time Woodrow’s car entered the garage and pulled into the parking spot. A moment later, Vaughn jammed his finger on the pause button. “There’s the BMW. Looks like a black 740i.”

Davie noted the make and model of the car and that it had entered the garage a couple of minutes behind the Audi. The BMW’s windows were tinted so it was difficult to see inside the car, but the driver appeared to be alone and wearing a ball cap pulled low over his face.

15

She couldn’t make out the license plate number because both front and rear plates were obscured.

“Hard to see the guy’s features,” Vaughn said. “I’m not even sure it’s a male.”

The BMW drove to the second floor and rolled slowly forward.

Vaughn adjusted the screen so they could see several views at once.

Woodrow got out of the Audi, walked to the trunk, and opened it. He jerked upright when the BMW stopped next to him. There was a muzzle flash and Woodrow disappeared from sight. The BMW’s tinted windows blocked some of the action, but it was clear the shooter got out of the car and ran toward the body, perhaps grabbing a wallet, passport, and the dog tag. The man then reached inside the trunk, pulled out a black carry-on bag, and ran back to the BMW. After that, the car made a U-turn and raced down the ramp. The schoolteacher appeared on screen less than a minute later. Vaughn switched to the camera shot of the exit kiosk. A woman collected the parking fee from the BMW’s driver and then he casually drove into the night.

“I’ll talk to the cashier,” Vaughn said. “Maybe we can get an artist to meet with her and come up with a composite.”

“Forget it,” Giordano said. “All we can see is he’s male, probably white, medium build, agile, dressed in dark clothes, but the guy’s face is obscured by a ball cap. My guess is he knew there’d be cameras in the garage, so he probably disguised himself in other ways, too. If the cashier didn’t get a good look at him, she might guess and your composite won’t be worth shit. You put a sketch on TV that looks like half the US male population and offer a reward, a million people will call in to say, ‘Hey, I know that guy.’ Where does that leave you? Nowhere.”

Davie leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “At least we know why we didn’t find a suitcase in the victim’s car. The shooter took it.”

16

“He didn’t seem to care if the victim was identified,” Vaughn said.

“Otherwise, he wouldn’t have left the second dog tag. We still don’t know why Woodrow was wearing it.”

Davie thought again about the single dog tag. Luna had told her the two were separated when a soldier died in combat. She wondered if that missing tag was symbolic to the killer. Maybe he was in the military and familiar with battlefield protocol, or perhaps he’d killed before and this was another trophy to add to his collection.

Davie rolled the chair back and got up. “I’ll run the Audi plates.

See if I can find the victim’s address. He might have a family member who could tell us why he was at the airport.”

Vaughn closed the video file. “I’ll start calling airlines, see if they’ll provide intel about his travel plans without a warrant.”

Davie sat at her computer, searching the Department of Motor Vehicles database. Zeke Woodrow had no vehicle registered to him, but he might have listed it under the name of a spouse or a business.

The Audi was registered to a rental agency in Carpinteria, but when she called to speak to a representative, she got a message that the office was closed for the day.

She found Woodrow’s California driver’s license in DMV records but the information was restricted. It showed his photo but not his address. That often meant the driver was a law enforcement officer, but there was no LEO note on the file. Luna had told her that Woodrow’s blackened dog tag likely meant he’d operated behind enemy lines. Perhaps his address was hidden because of that past military service. She continued searching until she was able to access his residential address from a non–law enforcement database.

Woodrow was leasing a house in Topanga managed by a local real estate company. A few minutes later, Davie located the agent’s name, Amber Johnson. The woman sounded surprised when Davie called 17

with the news of Woodrow’s death and offered obligatory condolences. She told Davie that, as far as she knew, the victim lived in the house alone. She agreed to meet them at the address with a key.

Davie leaned toward the half-wall partition that separated her workstation from Jason Vaughn’s. “I found Woodrow’s address.”

“At least one of us has good news. I just got off the phone with a buddy in the DA’s office. To get information about Woodrow’s military record we have to send a subpoena and cover letter to the headquarters for military records in St. Louis, Missouri. She said they take at least ten weeks to respond, that is, if they respond.”

“We’re investigating a homicide.”

“The military doesn’t give a rat’s patootie about that. Their mission is to protect the privacy of their personnel.”

“Maybe Luna knows a back door into the database.”

“I’ll ask him.”

Giordano was on the telephone again. He didn’t even look up when Davie opened his desk drawer and grabbed the keys to a detective car. She and Vaughn logged out of the building and headed for the parking lot.

18

Mystery

A DOG TAG AT A MURDER SCENE LEADS LAPD DETECTIVE DAVIE RICHARDS INTO A KILLER’S PATH IN THIS THRILLING STORY OF SOLDIERS AND SECRETS. Homicide detective Davie Richards is called to an airport parking garage to investigate the shooting of a retired U.S. Army Ranger.

Missing personal items point to a robbery, but Davie suspects a more sinister motive when she notices only one military dog tag around the Ranger’s neck. Could the murderer have taken the other as a memento of the kill? As Davie unravels baffling clues, one murder becomes two and a pattern begins to emerge. Racing to save the killer’s next victim, Davie is led to a shocking twist that challenges her physical and emotional endurance and tests the bonds of brotherhood and friendship.

PRAISE FOR PACIFIC HOMICIDE: “An excellent book about the emotions that drive some of the best policemen and women to go after their own justice, no matter the cost.”

—SUSPENSE MAGAZINE

“Terrific! The classic cop story goes contemporary in this suspenseful, riveting thriller.”

—HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN, author of Say No More

“Combines an insider’s knowledge of the LAPD with a clear-eyed, no-nonsense heroine . . . Davie Richards is easy to fall in love with.”—MATT WITTEN, writer and producer for House, Law & Order, and Homicide

$14.99 US

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